30 July 2014

Tearing Down Home

Now open at Influence Art Gallery, curated by Yvan Slade, is Tearing Down Home by Haveit Neox. The artist's usual signatures are present throughout the work: earthen tones of browns and grays, large and slowly moving textures, and humanoid forms, now rendered, as he notes, in mesh using ZBrush. The work poses the questions: "Why are you tearing down your beautiful home? Why are you tearing down the planet as well?" Despite my own fidelity toward environmental ideals, the installation didn't engross me as much as Haveit's works usually do. (For me, it's more powerful to focus on possible solutions rather than the discouraging state of the overall problem, and the latter is the focus here.) He adds, "In my exhibit, people are tearing down their home — a symbol of losing contact with the planet which shelters life. Territorialism and profit at any price are human priorities. They outweigh the necessary steps in saving the Earth before the harm soon becomes irreversible. The motif of dried leaves shows the remnants of Nature blowing into the crumbling structure. Instead of grasses, molds, insects or other life forms that would have naturally spread throughout ruins, I show the Nature we killed: the dried remains of life."